A metapredictive model of synthetic awareness for enabling tool invention

大约330万年前，我们的祖先制造了第一个工具。他们想象出一种新的工具，然后敲击石头，直到它成为一种有效的切割工具。工具创造是人类一个杰出的技术里程碑，为我们提供了前所未有的对环境的控制。这种能力需要认知能力，比如预测、元认知、抽象和创造力——所有这些都与人类的意识有关。目前的人工智能系统和机器人在很大程度上缺乏这些能力，甚至无法监测和评估其行为的后果，更不用说开发新工具来应对环境挑战了。METATOOL旨在提供一个综合意识的计算模型，以增强适应性和实现工具发明。这将使机器人能够监控和自我评估其性能，收集和重用这些信息以适应新环境，并最终解锁创造新工具的可能性。在意识的预测解释下，基于神经科学和考古证据，我们将：1)开发一种基于预测处理的元认知计算模型（元预测）；2)在两个用例场景中验证其在真实机器人中的实用性：条件顺序任务和工具创建。METATOOL将为下一代人工系统和机器人提供蓝图，这些系统和机器人可以在有或没有工具的情况下进行自适应和预期控制（改进的技术），自我评估（新颖的可解释的人工智能），并发明新工具（破坏性创新）。工具制造和工具发明是人类历史上杰出的技术里程碑。类似的突破现在可以在工程上设想。我们已经有了使机器能够使用工具的算法，现在是时候开发创造工具的机器人了。

Around 3.3 million years ago our ancestors made the first tool. They imagined a new utensil and then knapped a stone until it became an efficient tool for cutting. Tool creation was an outstanding technological milestone for humanity providing us with unprecedented control over our environment. This ability required cognitive capabilities, such as prediction, metacognition, abstraction, and creativity—all of which are associated in humans with awareness. Current artificial intelligence systems and robots largely lack these capabilities and cannot even monitor and evaluate the consequence of their actions let alone develop new tools to address environmental challenges. METATOOL aims to provide a computational model of synthetic awareness to enhance adaptation and achieve tool invention. This will enable a robot to monitor and self-evaluate its performance, ground and reuse this information for adapting to new circumstances, and finally unlock the possibility of creating new tools. Under the predictive account of awareness, and based on both neuroscientific and archeological evidence, we will: 1) develop a novel computational model of metacognition based on predictive processing (metaprediction) and 2) validate its utility in real robots in two use case scenarios: conditional sequential tasks and tool creation. METATOOL will provide a blueprint for the next generation of artificial systems and robots that can perform adaptive, and anticipative, control with and without tools (improved technology), self-evaluation (novel explainable AI), and invent new tools (disruptive innovation). Tool-making and tool-invention are outstanding technological milestones in human history. A similar breakthrough can now be envisioned in engineering. We already have algorithms to enable machines to use tools and now it is time to develop robots that create tools.